Trump mulling privatization of International Space Station

Aerospace company Boeing now operates the station for NASA, which costs $US3 to $US4 billion each year.

Boeing has helped manage the ISS for more than 20 years and space station manager Mark Mulqueen warned against privatisation.

In its budget request to be released Monday, the administration would request $150 million in fiscal year 2019, with more in additional years, "to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial successors to the ISS-potentially including elements of the ISS-are operational when they are needed".

All or part of the ISS has been in low Earth orbit since 1998 and the station has been continuously inhabited since 2000.

However, the Washington Post also reported that the White House apparently doesn't have anyone specific in mind to take over the space station, which costs $US3 -4 billion a year to run and has already run the federal government almost $US100 billion in construction, maintenance, and operational costs.

The US has reportedly spent almost $US100 billion ($A140 billion) to build and operate the ISS. Cruz said he hoped reports of ending station funding would "prove as unfounded as Bigfoot" and blamed it on "numskulls" at the Office of Management and Budget. Even if it weren't, it's not clear how a privatized space station could operate. And as The Verge points out, there are several other reasons why this idea will see opposition, but ironically, one of the stand-out points is that losing access to the ISS could actually harm the commercial space industry, which has been using the ISS to test new technologies and equipment, launch probes, and create ...

According to Space.com, NASA spokesman Rob Navias said: 'The countdown ended just seconds before liftoff with an abort command that was sent from the blockhouse at Baikonur'.

Internal documents now show Trump wants to turn the ISS into a "kind of orbiting real estate venture run not by the government, but by private industry". Russian Federation has scrubbed the planned launch of an unmanned cargo spacecraft that was to have delivered tons of supplies to the International Space Station.

It didn't immediately propose what private enterprise might do with the station or what companies might take it over. It's also worth noting that anything like this is far from becoming a reality.

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